LURE BIRDS WITH RIGHT PLANTINGS

Who would want a garden with an untidy brush pile, a dead palm trunk, rotting stumps and a swampy spot?

Birds, for one. So do Pat and DeWitt Cromartie, who have such a garden in Fort Lauderdale's Coral Ridge area.

All her life, says Pat Cromartie, she has been gardening with the purpose of luring birds into her yard. She and her husband, both longtime members of the Audubon and Native Plant societies, have turned their property into a woodsy sanctuary that attracts migratory as well as homebody-type birds.

It's a matter of stewardship, she explains: "When the Lord gives us a little piece of land he expects us to take care of the little creatures on it."

She quotes Broward County naturalist Gil MacAdam, another homeowner who has turned his yard into a haven for birds. Consider what the woods are like when you landscape your home, and create a setting in which birds will be comfortable, MacAdam advises.

Provide food, shelter and fresh water, and you'll have migratory birds, the Cromarties explain. Plant trees and shrubs that bear fruit and seeds. Martins, which are insect eaters, are likely to nest in bird houses set up near canals and rivers where mosquitoes are plentiful. If you have the space, have a brush pile where birds can be safe from predators. A brush heap lures other interesting critters, too. The Cromarties have had a green heron going through theirs in a quest for frogs.

The Cromartie garden contains a small pond surrounded by shrubbery, and a swampy spot, the result of the air conditioner outflow, filled with cattails and other bog plants.

Some birds have specific quirks, they've discovered. Wood warblers, for example, like rotting stumps and the sound of running water. Owls and other birds will head for the dead palm trunk to build their nests.

When the Cromarties moved into their house 17 years ago, the yard was wide open to the street with a back yard covered with glaringly white pebbles, and no shade except for a few palms. It was appealing to neither human nor bird.

The couple put in a sheltering Surinam cherry hedge which has grown high and dense. Then they planted several black-olive trees. "If we knew then what we know now we would have had more variety," she says.

Nevertheless, there is plenty of variety, a mix of native and exotic species to attract birds of just about any taste.

Pat Cromartie keeps a list of the migrants as they appear. "We try to discover who eats what so we can replenish the food supply."

A large mulberry, which she calls the "most fantastic tree to bring in birds," fruits all spring while the migrants are on their way north. She credits it for the appearance of a pair of brown thrashers, which ordinarily tend to stick to remote, wooded areas. They spent six weeks in the Cromartie yard and apparently nested there because they spotted a young thrasher one day.

A large native hamelia, or firebush, in the front yard brings butterflies to the nectar-filled, orange-red flowers, and later on, birds eat the purple berries. A small brush pile underneath hides migratory birds from predatory hawks.

The native callicarpa or beauty-berry, a pretty shrub with heavy clusters of dusky purple berries strung like beads along the stem, is one of the finest plants for attracting fruit-eating birds. It grows in the Cromarties' "migratory corner" where visiting birds also feed on lantana and pyracantha berries and find shelter.

Fruit eaters are attracted to Solanum seaforthianum, a vine with red berries. The red berries of the rouge plant attract warblers. "I had no idea what warblers would go to. The Black-throated blue warblers loved it," she says.

And a yellow-breasted chat once visited a spicewood by the pond, stayed until it had cleaned off every one of the small black berries, then left.

The Cromarties point to other attractive native plants suitable for landscaping -- wild coffee, wax myrtle, randia, wild lime, elderberry, blolly, marlberry, West Indian trema and white stopper. With some of these natives, says Pat Cromartie, you'll need both male and female plants for pollination and fruit production.

Some of them have come from native plant nurseries in Dade County; others have been snatched from the path of a bulldozer. The callicarpas, for example, were yanked from a construction site.

Their landscaping style is spreading around the block. Some of the neighbors are changing sections of their gardens into bushy, woodsy areas. Next door, Lola Byrd, tired of mowing grass, has transformed her front yard into a "prairie," a colorful hodgepodge of orange, red, pink and white cosmos, portulaca, four-o'clocks, purple ruellia, gaillardia, blue daze, pink and white periwinkle, pentas and red verbena. Maintenance is low here, too. The cosmos, periwinkle and four-o'clocks continually reseed themselves and the verbena multiplies by sending out runners.

Blooming is constant and heavy, which Byrd credits to plenty of mulch -- chopped tree trimmings supplied by a neighbor in the tree business. "And I'm a great believer in cow manure," she adds.

The prairie attracts birds and butterflies -- and people. Strangers stop, and area residents bring their friends and relatives.